Biography

Luigi Sergi, born in Presicce (LE) in 1952, lives and works in Novara. His Salento origins deeply influence his artistic production through the broad and diffused light that reflects the sunny landscape of the South, the colors of his land, and the pigments that have sedimented in his work, never in a purely figurative manner. On the contrary, as Lionello Mandorino highlights (Maglie 1976): “In Sergi, broad brushstrokes and warm colors characterize the constant movement and inspirational lyricism of the work permeated by figurative essentialism.” Sergi began his artistic activity in 1970, the period of his first solo exhibition, dedicating himself simultaneously to painting and sculpture and attending the Art Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce, where he graduated in sculpture in 1975. After completing his studies, he moved to Rome where he stayed until 1978, starting a research on modularity and the psychology of form, deepening his path also through comparisons with some artists, particularly approaching the works of Rocco Coronese and Corrado Cagli. Sergi’s art is defined not only through these encounters but also thanks to the personal re-elaboration of various artistic movements: cubism, abstractionism, informal art, pop art, conceptualism, up to optical experiences. After his Roman parenthesis, he settled in the province of Novara and took on the role of teacher of Artistic Subjects, continuing his technical-pictorial experimentation and surpassing the canonical boundaries of the work, bringing real space into the painting and the painting into real space, so that: “…the simple horizontal and vertical limits of the pictorial plane have become a sort of pure evocative environment of memory, of remembrance and then of simple emotion; a sort of moonlit landscape vibrating with lights and shadows, formally related to one of the phases of Corrado Cagli…” (Marco Rosci, Orta S. Giulio 1983). In 1980, he definitively moved to Novara where he almost immediately met the critic Giovanni Quaglino with whom he would establish a deep friendship. It was precisely the critic who followed him in his career and encouraged him to exhibit works related to the research conducted in the last five years of work. Since 1982, he has exhibited in several solo and group shows, demonstrating a mature acquisition of artistic experiences, while at the same time defining a painting style based on intuition, on a physical and emotional relationship with the canvas. In 1983, for the Municipality of Borgoticino, he created a large decorative painting panel in the atrium of the middle school, through which one can perceive the artist’s return to his figurative past interpreted with a weave of chromatic gradations. Simultaneously, Sergi also directs his attention towards a new cognitive path: the poetics of the “package”, a metaphor for life as mystery, enigma, or surprise that may be worth not revealing. The poetics of the package as artwork offers reflections on the difficulty of interpreting reality and the need to address it, penetrating it through forms that are not immediately decodable. In 1998, Sergi constructs real packages that are often also shipped, and as the artist himself explains: “The package conceals a work, but it could also be a

simple empty container, that is, artwork itself: the one who owns it must open it, discovering the content, of which he is not certain of its existence. In case it is missing, the owner would have nullified the object, driven by his curiosity into a new game of chance, where creation- illusion-destruction follow with inevitable necessity. The gesture becomes a risk: revelation of something hidden or irreversible annihilation, joyful discovery or bitter surprise. And the package almost assumes the connotations of a metaphor for many moments of our existence: attractive when they are still hidden in the future, often disappointing when experienced.” In 2003, the international magazine “Italiaimballaggio” dedicated its cover for the month of June to Sergi’s work on the theme of the package. In 1990, he opened his studio in Via Zanoia to visitors for the first time, with the exhibition “Aggregations,” and the following year, the Municipality of Presicce organized a major retrospective exhibition for him in the former Convent of the Carmelites, while in 1997, together with the Prospettive Association, he was awarded the “Città di Presicce” Prize for his merits in the field of art over more than twenty years of activity. His paintings propose a surreal note “that hovers and dominates the diversified spaces in their setting and in the poetic use of color that governs them, transforming into particular rhythms and finesse, to become sky, matter, dream, freedom, and stylistic purity” (Giuseppe Vese, Lecce 1988). But: “Geometric interlocks, colored superimpositions in never faded nor intrusive shades… are cleverly amalgamated with precision, so much so that it doesn’t take much to be amazed observing the canvases even for the first time” (Fabrizio Morea, Orta 1983). The artist, using acrylic and enamel, blends them organically to make them tools for constructing an astral art, a leap towards freedom and dream that acquires visibility through pink and blue. As Giovanni Quaglino wrote in 1982: “The aggregations of primordial matter, the chaos rich in enigmas and potential for development, find order in the poetic intuition of the artist… the tumult of matter finds a brake, a higher balance in the geometric scanning of the fields, in the rhythmic alternation of light and shadow, in the harmonious aggregation of color.” In 1988, the Municipality of Lecce organized the exhibition “Onirism and reality in the art of Luigi Sergi,” curated by Giuseppe Vese, and on this occasion, Sergi presented to the public large-scale works: “Many works, often of large dimensions, often multidimensional, connect celestial mysteries, passages of volumes, completeness of forms, connection with reality, all in perfect harmony, according to modules well defined by a crescendo of alternate forms and visualized through perspectival incidences…” (Giuseppe Vese, Lecce 1988). In the elaboration of these works, the artist: “rejects the figurative (or worse, illustrative) function of the painting: objects, figural traces, which nevertheless survive in his paintings, are always decontextualized, projected into a purely symbolic dimension, where they lose their obvious semanticity to assume an evocative meaning… in these illusionistically manipulated surfaces, one can perceive the ambiguity of a painting that, while aiming at the zero degree of pure effects of light and color, seeks a new semantic status… for Sergi, art… becomes an expression of tensions and material and spiritual impulses from which the artist cannot extricate himself through a detached and purely aesthetic vision.” (Giovanni Quaglino). Sergi’s works always presuppose an attentive viewer, ready to go beyond what is immediately legible, to grasp the complexity of signs, images, and contexts enveloped in an almost dreamlike but, at the same time, more than ever real dimension. From reality emerges not only what is most intimate in the soul, but it also represents what needs to be overcome, to

go beyond and unleash freedom by opening the window. And it is precisely the theme of the window, a metaphor for the courage to dare to look beyond a banal horizon, which will be interpreted in 1999 in Gravellona Lomellina when, commissioned by the Municipality, Sergi creates a sculpture on the theme. The expressive research passes through the constant theme of the sphere, a body without beginning or end, laden with symbolic meanings. It is Stefano Pistochini (1996) who captures and underlines this aspect: “The sphere is a sign loaded with that representative dynamism, considered in that function of exploratory order that is notoriously existential revelation of man to himself and continuous osmosis between internal and external.” Again on this theme, Massimiliano Cesari in 2003, in the presentation of the exhibition organized by the Municipality of Gagliano del Capo, “Emotions in Colors,” wrote: “The spheres that abound give the works sculptural dynamism, thus accommodating the ‘whims’ of the author. It is not by chance, precisely, that the preferred form is the sphere: the solid that best represents the perfection of the cosmos, a form that does not allow any anchoring with everyday reality, being freed from any possibility of tactile concretization of its surface.” The sphere represents a sort of eye that allows a game of gazes between the spectator and the artwork. Sergi has never stopped reflecting since the 1980s on the debate between the apparent form and the objective, on a different way of seeing what is inside and what is outside of us. This way of penetrating reality is concretized through polychrome painting-sculptures and the introduction of relief in the painting, which allows the artist to enhance the space to define multiple intersecting spatial planes. Marco Rosci (Novara, 1986) defined his work: “…. love for the ‘scenic surprise,’ for the fantastically articulated space, for the theatrical machine.” His works, many of which belong to museums, public institutions, and private collections, are appreciated for the constant and personal artistic research. An indefatigable artist (also due to the commitment shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions), today Luigi Sergi opens to the public a space in his new studio, “Inside Art” which organizes exhibitions, cultural, and artistic events. His research has become increasingly intense, and in recent years, he has collaborated with various artists and critics from the Piedmont and Salento regions. Currently, his interest lies in large-scale installations designed to establish relationships with the places that host them; his works, both pictorial and sculptural, testify to a research path that has never ceased and reaches its peak with the opening of the Casa dell’Arte, which collects the fruits of a continuously evolving journey.